The Final Straw
by HermyG07
Summary: When Rory has trouble with Logan, who better to save her than Jess? Set somewhere within the most recent episodes, and rated for possible content in later chapters. ON HIATUS


Disclaimer: I own none of the _Gilmore Girls_ characters. Nope, none of them, just the bulk of the plotline.

A/N: This story is set basically within the boundaries of the later episodes. Rated M just for caution, because I'm not entirely sure what will happen in later chapters.

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Rory stood outside the rowdy bar where she and Logan had been having one of the most awkward dates in history. He was now inside, drunk, being entertained by Finn and some slutty girl he had picked up at a McDonald's drive-thru, doing mediocre and very tipsy impressions of George and Laura Bush. Rory had downed far too many sangrias, and was currently experiencing a slightly dizzy and carefree sensation. The annoying, responsible voice in her head – the same voice that had begged her to stop after the fourth drink – told her that she couldn't possibly drive home like this. Not if she actually wanted to end up _at home_, that is. She distantly considered calling Lorelai, but decided that she didn't want her mother hearing her sloshed out of her mind.

She picked a different number from memory, not remembering whom the number belonged to, but getting the feeling that whoever answered would be able to help her.

The phone rang a few times before a gruff, annoyed voice answered, "Who is it?"

"Jess?" Rory asked, finding the sound of his voice particularly funny and grinning lopsidedly.

"Rory?" he questioned back, his voice slowly sounding more awake and coherent. "What's the matter? It's three in the morning."

"Wow, is it really?" she asked lazily, not completely registering how late it was.

"What's the matter?" he repeated, his voice becoming a bit more alert and serious. "Where are you? You sound drunk."

"Well," she dragged, rolling her eyes and thinking about how to describe what was going on, "I was at this bar with Logan, and then he got mad at me about something," she said vaguely, not remembering what it was he had been angry about, "and then got some kind of tropical sangria or something and it was really good so I tried a few and now I'm kind of dizzy and I don't want to call my mom or crash."

Jess found himself rubbing his hand over his eyes, still holding the phone to his ear in the other hand. "How many is 'a few'?" he asked.

"How many could I afford?" she answered confusedly, rolling her eyes again. "One, two, three… seven."

"Seven sangrias," Jess echoed pensively, ignoring Rory's laughter at the alliteration.

"Jess, what's going on?" Rory asked, depressed by his serious tone.

"You're drunk," he replied bluntly, getting up from his bed and holding the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he quickly shrugged on a leather jacket.

"I'm not drunk," Rory said slowly, "I'm just a bit… edible!" She laughed again. Edible had always been such a funny word. She couldn't remember what it meant at the moment, but she knew it had something to do with food. Which reminded her, she was hungry!

"You are drunk," he confirmed, and she heard him walking toward the door. "I'm coming to get you. Tell me where you are."

She thought for a moment. Her mind was getting hazy. She turned around a bit and noticed a neon sign that said "Big Bob's Bar" with the _g_ and the _r_ burned out. She told him where she was and why she was there.

"He took you to a stripper bar for a _date_?" he asked her, disbelief and irritation leaking into his tone. Had she been sober, Rory might have tried to counter his feelings, but right now she just wanted to get home.

"I don't know," she replied distractedly. "Can you pick me up or not?"

"Yeah, sure. I'll be right there." He hung up the phone and walked out the door, letting it slam behind him. He walked out to his car and got in it, bringing it jerkily to life. The bar she was apparently at was only about twenty minutes to a half hour away. He just hoped that she had enough sense to stay where she was.

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Rory walked over to her car and slid into a sitting position against the driver's side door. The grassy patch in front of the parking spots was littered with broken Coors bottles and the asphalt was virtually covered in cigarettes, some stamped out and run over a few times, others still glowing and smoking. Before she realized it, her eyelids were shutting, and the last thing she saw through her dark eyelashes was the glowing redness of a cigarette butt.

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When Jess finally reached the filthy parking lot of the isolated bar, he quickly scanned it for Rory, but only saw her car.

"Damn it!" he yelled to himself, looking around again. He saw a guy smoking something by the door to the bar, leaning against the faded bricks. He strode over to the man, who looked maybe seventeen or eighteen, which he couldn't care less about at the moment.

"Have you seen a girl around here?" he asked angrily in a no-nonsense tone that was apparently evident, because the man seemed to cower on the wall a bit. "Kind of small, brown hair, and pretty damn drunk."

The man pointed toward Rory's car and mumbled, "Over there."

Jess looked over and, sure enough, Rory was sitting with her legs out straight underneath an SUV next to her own car. Judging by the way her chest rose and fell in some specific rhythm and her head lay unmoving against the car door, he could tell that she was asleep. Without looking back at the cowering man, he strode over to Rory's car, but he couldn't think of a subtle way to approach her.

He shook her right shoulder carefully. "Rory," he said, his voice softer than expected. She groaned and shrugged him away, going immediately back to sleep. "Oh-kay," Jess said as he bent over her and wrapped one arm around her back, his shoulder supporting her head, and the other arm under her legs. He lifted her up and she groaned again, but noticed that his chest was warm and turned toward him, nestling her head on his chest and grabbing his shirt in one fist for security. As she breathed steadily, her chest pressed against his, and he felt himself grow warmer as he carried her back to his car. He shifted her legs and opened the passenger's door with one hand, lowering her onto the seat. She sat back in her seat but kept her fingers clamped on his shirt. He took her fingers in his and carefully removes them.

Finally she woke up. She blinked a few times and looked, seemingly confused, at her fingers, then at Jess's shirt, and finally at Jess. She seemed to be past her out-of-it phase, and now smiled at him.

Almost as if on cue, Logan, Finn, and drive-thru girl stumbled out of the bar. After a few minutes of spinning drunkenly around the lot, Logan stopped, while the other two continued spinning. Squinting in their direction, Logan finally spotted Rory and Jess.

Without much deliberation, Rory reached a hand to the back of Jess's head and pulled him into a smashing kiss.

His mind fumbled for a minute and then he came to his senses and pushed her back, yelling, "Rory!" He noticed her gaze affixed on a spot behind him, and, looking back, was hardly surprised to see Logan there, looking confused and enraged all at once. Jess turned to Rory and gave her one last frustrated and angry look before turning his attention back to Logan.

"What do you think you're doing, Diner Man?" Logan asked menacingly, his voice almost dangerously slurred, his eyes unfocused, but still angry-looking. Jess met his angry glare with an indifferent one.

"I'm picking up _your_ girlfriend, who, by the way, is just short of punch drunk," he responded mockingly.

Logan advanced on him angrily, and if he hadn't veered off to the left at some point before getting back on track, Jess might have been the slightest bit scared. Now he smiled his mocking, one-sided grin. "You little…" Logan began lamely, looking like he was about to take a swing at him.

"What're you gonna call me? 'Girlfriend stealer,' 'Diner Boy,' 'Anti-Gandhi,' take your pick."

Logan, already flushed, became an almost throttling shade of red and took one heavy step toward Jess before smashing him hard on the left cheek with his right fist.

"Logan, come on, man!" Finn yelled at him from his car across the lot, not noticing the one-sided battle happening there. Logan sent Jess one last glare, but didn't bother trying to grab Rory before he ran across the parking lot and slid into the back of Finn's car. They, apparently, weren't worried about driving home drunk, and skidded out of the parking lot and down a dark street.

Jess crossed around the back of the car and sat in the driver's seat, not looking at Rory.

Squinting over at the driver's side mirror, Rory could see the bright red spot on Jess's left cheek, and she closed her eyes regretfully. They were silent the whole way out of the parking lot and half of the ride to her house.

"Why did you kiss me?" Jess asked her abruptly, not taking his eyes off the road.

Rory, who had been sitting with her head against the window, sat up, startled. She looked over at him intently, be he kept his eyes on the road, even though they were currently at a red light.

"Jess, I'm tired and my head hurts—"

"Why did you kiss me?" he repeated with rising annoyance, still not looking at her, but his thumb began tapping impatiently on the steering wheel.

Rory, seeing no other way to answer than to tell him what was on her mind, felt her chest tighten. "I'm not sure," she replied lamely, glancing back up to see his facial expression. He was surprisingly blank, and she waited expectantly for a reaction.

"See now, if you had just _wanted_ to kiss me, you would have just said it. So now I have to wonder." She couldn't decide whether to feel more or less tense to hear his slight sarcasm.

"Well, at first it was because I saw Logan,"—Jess's face contorted ever-so-slightly into the predictable frown—"But after that, I just kind of wanted to." Jess rolled his eyes and pressed his foot on the gas as the light changed.

"So enjoyment was just kind of a perk to pissing your boyfriend off," he said, more stating it as a fact than leaving it in the air. Rory wasn't sure how to answer him.

"He's not my boyfriend," she said quietly. Jess stared at the road in disbelief.

"That's funny, because last time I checked you two were a bit more than buddies."

"Okay, well I meant he's not my boyfriend _anymore_."

He brought the car to a halt in front of a stop sign. They were on an empty street about five minutes from her house. For the first time since they got in the car, he looked at her with a casual and almost soft, yet penalizing stare.

"Are you sure about that?" he asked intensely.

Without hesitation she replied, "Yes," and stared back at him.

"Okay then," he finished, turning his attention back to the road and driving around the corner.

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When they finally reached her house, none of the lights were on. Rory suspected that her mother was sleeping, and led Jess into the house and toward the kitchen.

"Hungry?" she asked tiredly, pointing to the fridge. Jess shook his head and Rory opened the door, removing a piece of foil-wrapped cake and extracting a fork from a drawer. As she ate the cake rapidly, she explained that she had eaten nothing all night except for bar peanuts.

When she was done he followed her into her room. She sat on the bed and he in the desk chair.

"So, I think I'm gonna go now," he said slowly after a few minutes of awkward silence, lifting himself from the chair and gesturing with his thumb toward the door.

"No," Rory said suddenly, and he stopped. "I'm going to wake up in a few hours with a huge hangover, and I really don't want the first thing I see to be my mom."

"Or the sun," he supplied, and she smiled. "So, what do you want me to do?" he asked seriously.

"Stay," she replied simply.

"How long?"

"How long before Luke sends the bloodhounds?" she replied.

"Probably whenever Lorelai figures it out, so I'd give it 'til eight."

She smiled and flushed a bit at the fact that he was willing to stay the night with her, despite the fact that he would probably be in more trouble than either of them could imagine. She then realized that she was mind-numbingly tired. She stood up and went to her drawers, extracting a pair of blue flannel pajama pants and a Smash Mouth t-shirt, then turning to Jess and hoping that he would get the message.

"Oh, _now_ I have to leave," Jess replied jokingly. She began to push him by the chest through the door and he held his hands up in surrender. "I'm going, I'm going." She shut the door quietly behind him and changed her clothes, tossing her dirty jeans and shirt onto the old laundry basket in the corner of the room.

She reopened the door and found Jess leaning against the wall to the left of the doorway. He turned lazily toward her and walked back into her room.

"Now what?" he asked blankly, looking around her room. Rory went to the bottom drawer of her dresser and pulled out some spare blankets, putting them on the carpet next to her bed. Jess stared at them for a minute, then looked incredulously at Rory.

"You're joking, right?" he asked her, pointing at the blankets. She shrugged and gave him a "pretty please" look, to which he sighed and sat down on her bed. She sat on the bed as well, slipping her legs under the covers and pulling her knees toward her. She reached her hand over her shoulder and rubbed at the back of her neck.

"What's wrong?" Jess asked, eyeing the hand at her neck.

"Oh, um, my neck kind of hurts from sleeping against the car," she said, quietly cursing herself as she realized that her car was still in the parking lot.

"Oh, okay, well…" Jess broke off uncertainly and began to slide off the bed. Rory slipped further under her covers while Jess laid out a messy makeshift bed on the floor.

"Night," Rory whispered without looking down at him.

Jess didn't bother voicing his goodnight, because he could tell that she would be asleep within moments. He pulled his shirt over his head, making sure that she was turned away. He debated taking off his pants, but decided that he would have to sleep with them on if he didn't want to be decapitated by Lorelai.

He slid uncomfortably under the blanket and turned on his side, facing Rory's bed. After pulling his arm out from under the blanket, he pulled it up over his chest and fell asleep.

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A/N: There you go, folks, Chapter 1. Hope you like it, please R&R!


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